I was watching a movie the other night that was set in the late 70s/early 80s, and at one point, the main character put some stuff in a plastic grocery bag. I turned to Mr. Athena and said “I don’t think they had plastic grocery bags in the late 70s.” He doesn’t recall when they started being used, but it was sometime in the mid-80s, at least in our part of the world.
So there we go - we remember a time before plastic grocery bags. How’s that for impressing the kids!
So what other mundane inventions came about in your lifetime? C’mon, this is important.
We could be here all day with minor innovations in domestic products. Disposable razors. Stay-clean sauce bottletops. Wine boxes. Artex (textured paint). Wood laminate flooring. That’s just from looking around the room.
On the subject of plastic shopping bags, I don’t remember a time when there was any other option here, and that’s going back to the early 70s. I was always puzzled watching characters in US TV shows struggling with handleless paper bags full of groceries. Why didn’t they just use plastic carrier bags?
I know they were using plastic grocery bags in 83/84, but I don’t recall how much earlier. Prior to that, it was theoretically brown paper bags, but most people used boxes.
There are still a few rare supermarkets that have a mesh cage full of boxes. Great idea, but I guess most find it detracts from the corporate image.
Googling suggests that plastic carrier bags were only introduced in the mid-to-late seventies, so I must be mistaken in remembering them earlier than that, unless Britain was somehow on the cutting edge of plastic bag technology. We certainly used cardboard boxes back then too.
Pop-tops that you don’t have to pull off of the can.
Shoes with velcro (how do kids learn to tie their shoes these days?).
Cutsie little boxes made to hold multiple remote controls.
Laundry detergent made especially for dark clothes.
Microwave popcorn. When I went to college and moved into the dorm in 1978 (!), the only cooking implements we were allowed to use were hotplates and popcorn poppers. I had this great popcorn popper that had a non-stick base that I would put a little oil onto. It had a big plastic dome covering it, with a small perforated well to put butter in, then a plastic covering for the well. When the popcorn was popping, the butter in the well would melt into the popcorn. When it was finished popping, you just turned the dome over, and you had yourself a big bowl of buttery popped goodness. Micowaved pocorn isn’t nearly as good. Now I want to go get a big ol’ honkin’ popcorn maker.
In my lifetime? I’d think of all of these things as being pretty mundane today, and none existed when I was born in the late 1950s.
Wireless remote controls for TVs
VCRs
CDs
Four-wheel drive that you can engage from INSIDE the vehicle
Personal computers
The Internet
The Web
Cellular telephones
Anti-lock brakes
The GPS system
Polio vaccine
Can I call monoclonal antibody treatment “mundane”? It certainly didn’t exist when I was born (or most of you, either), and it saved my life when got cancer.
I can’t list things like fax machines and jet planes, because they were in use during WWII. Those were, however, invented during my oldest brother’s lifetime.
FWIW I first saw them in almost the exact same form in the research lab I worked in in the late 1980s. They were used to clip off lengths of dialysis tubing when we needed to dialyze something. 5 or 10 years later I started seeing them in various sizes for use in resealing bags of food.
Oh, I thought of a good one. Flexible, lightweight poles with shock cords running through them, for tents and similar applications. Lightyears better than the heavy aluminum extendable poles we were still using when I was a kid.
When I remember struggling with tight, uncomfortable girdles and baggy nylon stockings as a young teen, I’m very grateful for the existence of pantyhose. The indentations in my thighs from garters took years to disappear. Yes, I know that some folks don’t like pantyhose, but at least there’s a choice now.
Isn’t it true that in most movies and TV shows, plastic grocery bags haven’t arrived even yet? When somebody in a movie brings home groceries, they usually seem to be carried in traditional paper bags, neatly creased, and with a French baguette of bread sticking out.
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I remember glass Sparkletts bottles. When I got to college in the summer of 1975, they were in the process of being phased out; but people still talked about how you could line the inside with Bacardi 151 and get an interesting flame effect if you threw in a lighted match. A ring of fire would work its way up the sides of the bottle and extinguish itself with a puff at the top of the bottle.
Roller luggage. Seriously. Remember those dog on a leash bags from the 70s and 80s that could roll for upwards of seven feet without falling over? Those sucked. How the hell did it take so long to figure out to design them the way that they are currently designed?
I don’t know if this counts as an invention, but how about digital clocks? I can (barely) remember being taught how to tell time (when the big hand is on the three and the little hand is on the nine …)
Foldout windshield sun blockers. You put it up so your car would not get hot. One side had a cutesy theme and the other side had “Help Me!” or “My Family has been Abducted” on the other side. God help you if you weren’t paying attention when you put that piece of cardboard on backwards.
I worked in a supermarket during high school in the late 1980’s. We were encouraged to push plastic bags because they were cheaper but many people wanted sturdy and crisp paper bags.
I detest them, and I’m glad some of the big city governments are starting to outlaw them. San Francisco already did, I believe, and Los Angeles is considering it. If you’re buying something oblong, like a loaf of bread, it always wants to spill out. The best way, of course, is to bring your own, but if I don’t have mine with me, I ask for paper.
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